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CP - Collaborative project (generic)

Objective

Today's Technical Systems of Systems (TSoS) such as transport, traffic and energy management systems require the deployment of an expensive-to-deploy and operate sensor and communication infrastructure. Moreover, they need a very time/effort-consuming modelling, analysis and control design procedure in order to achieve an efficient performance. On the contrary, Natural Systems of Systems (NSoS) such as the human brain, animal herds (swarms), teams of interacting/cooperating humans or animals achieve a highly efficient, elegant and supreme functionality without the need of an expensive infrastructure as they primarily rely on local information between neighbouring systems and, most importantly, they do not need any modelling, analysis or control design tools to achieve such a functionality. If the powerful attributes of NSoS were possible to be transferred and embedded into TSoS, this would lead not only to more efficient TSoS operations but, most importantly, to TSoS that are significantly easier, safer and more economical to design, deploy and operate. This is actually the main objective of Local4Global:to develop, test and evaluate a new groundbreaking, generic and fully-functional methodology/system for controlling TSoS which - as in the NSoS case - optimizes the TSoS performance at the global level without the need of deployment and operation of an expensive sensor and communication infrastructure and, most importantly, without the need for the use of elaborate and time/effort consuming modelling, analysis and control design tools.By embedding in TSoS attributes currently found only in NSoS, Local4Global's ambition is to develop a system that can be embedded in every day TSoS operations, produce substantial savings and Quality-of-Service improvements with the requirement of using the minimum possible infrastructure and minimum installation/operation effort. The economic and societal impact and consequences of the availability of such a system will be tremendous in literally any activity of everyday life: for instance, drivers/travellers will spent significantly less time for commuting, building occupants will see their energy bills significantly reduced and, most importantly, energy consumption and pollution will be substantially reduced. Furthermore, Local4Global application will not be only limited to areas and systems where no sophisticated control is currently employed (due to the requirement for an elaborate infrastructure). It will also be of great significance to areas and systems where, despite that the infrastructure is there, current control and management systems "cannot do the job". The Local4Global advances will lead to a fully-functional and ready-to-use system (Local4Global final product) - delivered in the form of an embedded, web-based, "plug-and-play" software system for generic TSoS. This system will be deployed and extensively tested in 2 real-life TSoS Use Cases, a Traffic TSoS Use Case and a Building TSoS Use Case.